Investigators of Capitol Riot on January 6th Access Trump’s Twitter Messages and Deleted Posts
Despite facing difficulties in obtaining former President Donald Trump’s records from Twitter (now X), the special counsel investigating the events of January 6th, 2020 eventually managed to acquire a substantial amount of information from the platform. However, according to recently unsealed court filings (PDF) disclosed by Politico, it required extensive negotiations and a significant amount of effort before the counsel could successfully obtain the requested data from Twitter.
Apparently, the search warrant required Twitter to produce all tweets that @realdonaldtrump created, drafted, liked or retweeted, including any posts he eventually deleted. The website was also required to hand over DMs that were “sent, received, saved in draft form, or otherwise linked” to @realdonaldtrump, as well as any other related accounts the former president may have used on the same device. All devices used to log into @realdonaldtrump were to be noted down and given to the attorney, along with the account’s privacy settings and IP address history from October 2020 to January 2021. In addition, Twitter was required to hand over all records of @realdonaldtrump’s searches and account location data from the same period.
Throughout the trial transcript, you’ll see how prosecutors insisted Twitter had to comply with a nondisclosure order barring the company from telling Trump about the order. They explained that they had evidence that disclosure of the warrant could jeopardize the investigation and warned the court that “there would be real prejudice and concern to the investigation for witnesses to proceed”. Meanwhile, the Twitter side argued that some of the information requested by investigators may have been within the scope of executive authority, which prosecutors and a judge questioned because they didn’t think it was likely that Trump was discussing official government matters via DMs.
As Politico reported, US District Judge Beryl Howell took notice of Twitter’s efforts to notify Trump in advance of the search warrant. He had called the action “extraordinary” and something the company had never done for other users. The judge wondered if Elon Musk was trying to “coddle” the former president and make him feel “especially welcome” on the platform. Trump’s Twitter account had already been restored after Musk took over the site, but he has yet to start posting again.
